


While You Were Away

by KChasm



Series: Superimpose [4]
Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: F/M, Good End, Post-Grima, grima!robin - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-07 13:34:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15220247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KChasm/pseuds/KChasm
Summary: Owain's father comes home.Owain goes to see him.





	While You Were Away

Owain doesn’t stop, even after it’s over. There’s no reason he should keep fighting now that the victory they’ve struggled and suffered and bled for has finally been won, but he keeps at it, anyway—becomes a wandering sellsword, a rumor of a mercenary, one who talks altogether too much but gladly offers service without charge when the cause is just. Within a year he is more legend than real, the tale of a strange myrmidon who descends from high to save the weary from the wicked before disappearing again, leaving no trace.

He’d love it, if he weren’t so miserable. If the Shepherds hadn’t gone up a Table and come down again missing a tactician.

What he should have done, once the rubble settled, was stay close to his mom—stay close, and try to help shoulder the loss. But to watch her force herself into playing false cheer, to see the moments the mask would slip and she would seem unbearably lost, as if unsure even whether she ought to mourn or not—

It hurt, and he was selfish, and it was easier to run (he had spent so much time running already), so he ran.

And then, one day, he wakes up in another inn, heads down for one last breakfast before his mysterious disappearance, and Lucina is there, waiting for him, mask over her face like she wore when it all began.

“Robin came back,” she says.

It takes Owain a moment to find his character—but only a moment. “Who is this that appears before me?” he says. “Not possibly—my trusted companion, she who shielded me in that darker yesteryear? Come, ‘Marth,’ let us sup together! Let us speak of the days we have had, of villains vanquished—”

“ _No!_ ”

The interjection surprises him—surprises them both, the embarrassment on Lucina’s face clear to Owain even with the mask between them. Then it’s gone—nearly gone, hidden with care.

(It’s another kind of mask, in a way. Only, this one Lucina acquired so long and a world ago, when they all found out that living and staying alive weren’t always the same thing. They all took masks like that, masks that won’t come off even now, but they can still see each other through them just fine. Years fighting at each other’s side will do that.

To Owain, Lucina’s distress might as well be displayed plain.)

“No,” says Lucina, carefully controlled. “This is only a brief stop, since I heard that I would find you here—but I’ve taken on certain duties, and I must attend to them still.”

And it is a well enough reason (weighty, if vague, spoken in that tone that Lucina has always used to confirm absolute seriousness), and Owain might believe it if he weren’t sure that she is lying through her teeth. Lucina has lied to him more and more often, since the Shepherds came down from the Table without his father. He wants to know why. He wants to know why Lucina always watched his father with a suspicion that became worse and worse until the very end of it all.

He wants to know why, on the now rare occasion they cross each other’s paths, it’s _him_ who now earns a critical eye.

But it is easier to run, so he thanks her for the news, and makes for the capital.

* * *

He arrives at Ylisstol unannounced. He wants it to be a surprise, after a year gone—and anyway, it fits well with his character as the mysterious swordsman. The guards do their jobs well enough, but they’re less of a challenge, compared to the Grimleal and Risen Owain spent years losing from his trail. It helps, of course, that he knows all the secret ways and passages (though enough of them have been blocked away that he takes longer to enter the castle than he would have liked).

And then it’s a simple matter of acting as if he belongs there (and does he? He’ll never think so) as he makes his way to his mom’s room. As long as no one recognizes he’s where he’s not supposed to be—

“Owain!”

It’s a delighted cry. A loud one, too, loud enough to draw anyone’s attention. And if that hasn’t made him, the girl leaping upon his back to throw her arms around his neck surely has. He doesn’t have to twist his head to know the name of this weight. “Morgan,” he grunts.

Morgan cackles, then just as roughly disengages herself, letting Owain turn around to see her properly face to face. Face to _face_ —she’s grown, in only a year. It’s a shock to look at her eyes without having to look down to see them.

“You just left without telling anybody!” says Morgan. “I mean, I guess that fits, with you, but I would have thought you’d at least have told _me_. I mean, you’re my brother, right? Uh, even if I still can’t remember most of it...”

“It was a decision borne of necessity,” says Owain, swelling his chest. “Imagine my shock, to discover that the darkness of my sword hand had not abated. In the night I fled, ere its thirst for blood become too strong for even me to control!”

“But brother!” Morgan cries. She twists her hand between them in a mystic gesture. “Did you not think that _I_ might quell the darkness of your soul? Between your mastery of the blade and my knowledge of the arcane arts, it would have been mere child’s play to hold this nefarious presence in check!”

“Zounds! Could this be truth? To think that my curse might have been shattered an eternity ago! Now, the only darkness that fills my sword hand is the dark shadow of regret.”

“Better that you have stilled your soul by your own power, dear brother.” But that’s the most Morgan can keep it. Her smile trails away, her expression becoming serious. “But are you alright?” she asks. “You left, right after Dad disappeared—the least you could’ve done was tell me where you were going. I mean, I figured it out, eventually—I _am_ a genius, after all—but _still_.”

He smiles gently, and doesn’t answer her question. “How’s Mom?”

“Good. Better, now that Dad’s back. She said she understood why you left, but I’m pretty sure she was lying. You’re gonna see her, right?”

“Of course! What sort of fated hero would I be otherwise?”

It’s the perfect opening for a little more theater, but she doesn’t take it. “Hey,” she says, suddenly quiet. Her smile is gone, replaced by a thin line of a mouth. “I mean—that _is_ why you left, right? Because of what happened—when Dad fought Grima.”

And it’s a strange question. Or maybe it’s only the answer that’s strange. Because yes—and no. Because it _hurt_ , to be left, just as he’d gotten to see his father again, but—

Even a year later, with everything suddenly alright, it’s hard to say. But he hasn’t played the fool all these years with nothing to show for it.

He smiles.

“I couldn’t blame Dad,” he says. “I wanted to blame Dad, but I couldn’t. You don’t remember, but back then—when we found out we could go back—”

And he hesitates, but says it after all—something terrible:

“After that, I think I always assumed the one who’d be sacrificing himself would be _me_.”

It’s the first time he’s admitted it out loud. To anyone.

Morgan, though, only tilts her head, looking at him quizzically. “Why would it be you?” she says, and that’s just like her, in that way, to ruin his big dramatic moment by honestly not understanding.

“It wasn’t just me,” says Owain. “I mean, not that that makes it any better! But I think Lucina—and all of us—I think we all thought that, as long as we stopped Grima, it didn’t matter what happened to us, you know?

For a second, there isn’t any reaction, as if Morgan hasn’t heard his words at all. And then she nods.

“Oh,” she murmurs. “Nobody told you.”

* * *

She won’t tell him, what nobody told him. It’s not her secret, she says, even if it isn’t a secret (she says that, too). She tells him to ask Dad, or Mom, or anyone else, which makes him wonder why _she_ can’t tell him herself. And ask them _what_?

She won’t tell him that, either.

But it can wait. His father is here, and his father is _alive_. _Everything_ can wait until after he sees him and Mom again.

He knows where his mom’s quarters are (though he asks Morgan, in case they’ve changed). And he had enough nights as a child, before everything went wrong, when he couldn’t sleep, and so he would toddle over to wake her up and ask if he could sleep with her, and she would kiss his forehead and tuck him in between her and Dad. So he knows when he’s there—standing before her bedroom door, feeling like that child again. He raises his hand to knock—

And then he notices the crack of light, an inch too wide, between the door and the wall, and hears the low voices within.

The door is ajar, and somebody is already there.

It’s his father, of course—it _must_ be his father—but there is a part of him that’s still too afraid to believe, and so, just to be sure, he puts himself at the edge of the door and looks.

It’s perhaps for the best. He only has that thin line of sight, and _still_ it takes his breath away, the room’s familiarity. All the old boudoir, before it was all destroyed—the armoire he used to hide in, when he was still a child and needed no reason except that he could—the white, pattern-sewn duvet—

And sitting in the duvet, legs dangling carefully over the side, his mother’s head laid in his lap—is his father.

(And yet, he is _still_ too afraid to believe.)

His father’s expression as he sits there is peaceful. His head is bowed, his eyes closed. He runs his hand carefully through his mother’s hair.

His mom giggles softly. Her eyes are shut as well.

“You’re messing up my hair,” she says.

“Your hair has long been in disarray,” his father states, matter-of-factly. “If you were truly concerned about it, you wouldn’t have lain here.”

“ _Rude._ I’m a princess, you know.”

“ _Only_ a princess?”

“Laugh it up. Everyone says I still outrank you.”

Owain’s father hums, amusedly. It’s a sound that’s a prelude to laughter, and there is something about it that’s _familiar_ in a way Owain can’t place. “A purely human convention,” his father says. “A word that means nothing without the power to support it. Do you think your title could save you now?”

And the tone is affectionate, but the _words_ —

His mom makes her own humming sound, a teasing echo. “Well, power doesn’t mean much unless you’re gonna use it,” she says back. “So—are you?”

“Clever girl,” Robin says. And then Robin smiles, and opens his eyes.

And his mouth is a rictus too wide, with teeth too sharp. And his eyes open in pairs, row after row until all six are peering down with irides red-violent bright.

And Owain can’t move, can’t think. And Owain is a child again, as weak and useless as he was when everything was taken from him the first time. And Owain watches through the door as Grima (and it’s Grima, it _is_ Grima, every sacrifice was for naught) curls his fingers through his mom’s hair as her eyes flutter closer to open, flutter closer to _too late_ —

Her eyes open. She _sees_.

Owain tries to scream. He can’t do that, either.

But his mother only smiles. “Your eyes are showing,” she says to Grima, as if this is nothing strange of this. And then she reaches up, and, with the back of her fingers, _gently_ _strokes Grima’s face_.

Owain understands. He understands. He doesn’t understand at all.

Grima _chuckles_. “You deserve to be seen,” he says. And he lifts his head, and all six of those eyes meet Owain’s through the bedroom door.

That is what breaks him—that gaze. The next he’s aware, he’s running down the hallway, those eyes still burning holes in his mind. He runs past Morgan, past the staff that never saw him come in, out of the castle.

He runs and doesn’t stop.


End file.
